A rambling blog about drowning that contains the most tenuous analogy you’ll see for a good long while

I never get bored of telling people that I died at the age of ten.

It happened during a school lesson at Sandbach public baths in Cheshire. After five years of trying, I was the only kid in the class who couldn’t yet swim. I even had to wear water wings just to walk through the foul smelling pool that was meant to kill off athlete’s foot.

I’d never seen the point of swimming, hated dolphins and thought my eyes would explode if I opened them underwater. In fact I had no intention of going anywhere near water for the rest of my life. Little did I know I would end up Manchester and have the damn stuff falling on my head every day.

Anyhow, it was Tuesday morning and I was in the middle of the deep end and the float that I was using to stay afloat decided to float off. Unfortunately the entire class was splashing around at the time and nobody noticed that my splashing around was less playful than anyone else’s. I bobbed up and down, screamed like a little girl and adopted the tactics of trying to drink the entire swimming pool before it drowned me. Needless to say this didn’t work and, after a short but thirst-quenching interval, I went to the bottom of the deep end and drowned to death.

I would love to say that this is the end of the story, but the next thing I know is that I’m on the water’s edge and getting pumped in the chest by a mildly concerned looking swimming instructor. After a little more pumping I was told that I was ‘fine’ and should get back in the pool to avoid the development of any future phobias related to drowning. This was the early eighties and nowadays I would have received £10 million pounds in compensation and a slot on the Jeremy Kyle show.

But eventually I recovered and went on to live a long and successful life, apart from a couple of crippling neurosis which have prevented me from ever reaching anything like my potential. However, the process of drowning stayed with me and taught me a lot about the world of copywriting and design.

Yes (and here’s the point of this blog) the process of drowning is a little like meeting a difficult brief. Yes, I’ve been drinking. Heavily.

To start with there is the initial abject panic. My thrashing around in the water was a reaction to the fact that I had no idea how to stay afloat. This can happen in the creative process where you have simply don’t know what to do and wildly chuck any old ideas around in the hope that one of them will stick. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing and you can normally sell these ideas to people at quangos who seem happy to pay for them. The recent Resign London campaign is an excellent example of this.

But there comes a point when the panic ends. This happened at around 60 seconds into my drowning experience when I could no longer breathe due to the presence of substantial amounts of water in my lungs. Incidentally, at this point I didn’t see a white tunnel or any of my relatives. I may have seen Jesus but I think it was actually the Green Cross Code Man.

What happened was I stopped struggling and actually relaxed. I suddenly found myself having dreamy thoughts along the lines of: ‘Well I might have only lived for 11 years, and may regret a few things such as missing Scooby Doo tonight, but I haven’t discovered girls yet or why money is so important, so it’s been a good life.”

In short, what I got was perspective and that’s what happens after a while with the creative process. You stop panicking, you look out of the window, an ickle birdie appears and good ideas finally come to you. You’ve been saved from drowning, then you have to get back in the pool and do it all again.

You might think that this is a tenuous analogy and you’d be very right. The fact is I still can’t swim, see dead people on a regular basis and can’t cross bridges without making goat-like noises. However, the next time you find yourself drowning under a tide of work and need to have a good idea, always remember: avoid Sandbach.